Iran’s supreme leader called Tues­day for “max­i­mum” vot­er turnout in this week’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to “over­come the en­e­my,” de­nounc­ing politi­cians who he de­scribed as be­liev­ing that every­thing good comes from the Unit­ed States.

While not nam­ing any par­tic­u­lar can­di­dates, the com­ments by Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ali Khamenei ap­peared to di­rect­ly un­der­cut the can­di­da­cy of the race’s sole re­formist can­di­date, 69-year-old heart sur­geon Ma­soud Pezeshkian. In re­cent speech­es, Pezeshkian has urged Iran to re­turn to the 2015 nu­clear deal and in­crease its out­reach to the West.

“The one who has the slight­est op­po­si­tion to the rev­o­lu­tion ... or the Is­lam­ic sys­tem, is not use­ful to you,” Khamenei said. “The per­son who is at­tached to the U.S., and imag­ines that with­out the U.S. fa­vor, it is not pos­si­ble to move a step in the coun­try, he will not be a good col­league for you.”

Khamenei’s com­ments in his hour­long speech drew re­peat­ed cries of “Death to Amer­i­ca, death to Is­rael” from a rau­cous crowd gath­ered to mark the Shi­ite hol­i­day of Eid al-Ghadir. The 85-year-old Khamenei urged the crowd to qui­et them­selves sev­er­al times dur­ing his re­marks.

Fri­day’s elec­tion comes af­ter a May he­li­copter crash that killed Iran’s hard-line Pres­i­dent Ebrahim Raisi, a pro­tégé of Khamenei.

Khamenei’s call comes af­ter a par­lia­men­tary elec­tion that saw a record-low turnout ear­li­er this year. Vot­ers across the cap­i­tal, Tehran, who have spo­ken with The As­so­ci­at­ed Press have ex­pressed wide­spread ap­a­thy over the elec­tion as Iran faces an econ­o­my crushed by West­ern sanc­tions and af­ter wide­spread an­ti-gov­ern­ment protests in re­cent years, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the 2022 death of Mah­sa Ami­ni and women re­fus­ing to wear the coun­try’s manda­to­ry head­scarf or hi­jab.

Pezeshkian, lit­tle known to the gen­er­al pub­lic be­fore reg­is­ter­ing for the cam­paign, has drawn large crowds to his speech­es in Tehran and oth­er ma­jor cities.

Pezeshkian al­so has been try­ing to adopt sym­bols of pre­vi­ous cam­paigns by pop­u­lar re­formists, who seek to change Iran’s theoc­ra­cy from the in­side. His cam­paign slo­gan “For Iran,” a call to na­tion­al­ism rather than re­li­gion, mir­rors an ear­li­er cam­paign slo­gan used by for­mer re­formist Pres­i­dent Mo­ham­mad Khata­mi.

Pezeshkian al­so has been pho­tographed wear­ing green scarves — ap­par­ent­ly try­ing to as­so­ciate him­self with the 2009 Green Move­ment protests that swept Iran af­ter the dis­put­ed vote and bloody crack­down that saw hard-lin­er Mah­moud Ah­madine­jad re-elect­ed as pres­i­dent.

There was no im­me­di­ate com­ment from Pezeshkian on Khamenei’s re­marks. How­ev­er, they ap­peared timed to give his op­po­nents am­mu­ni­tion for the last tele­vised de­bate be­fore the elec­tion, due to be held short­ly af­ter Khamenei spoke.

DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP) —